Blunt-talking liberal Michael Capuano won a 10-candidate brawl in the 1998 Democratic primary and has been safe ever since. He is a loyal soldier for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi but has been anxious to move up to the Senate. Read More

Blunt-talking liberal Michael Capuano won a 10-candidate brawl in the 1998 Democratic primary and has been safe ever since. He is a loyal soldier for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi but has been anxious to move up to the Senate.

Capuano (cap-yu-AH-no) was born and raised in Somerville. His paternal grandfather emigrated from Italy, and his father was the first Italian-American elected official in Somerville. His mother is the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. Capuano graduated from Dartmouth and Boston College Law School. He returned to Somerville to raise his family, practice law, and enter politics. By day, he worked for the legislature’s Joint Committee on Taxation and practiced law. In off-hours, he served as alderman of the 5th Ward, as his father had. He then won election five times as Somerville mayor. For decades an Irish and Italian town, Somerville now has many graduate students and young couples. Capuano seems to have been the right politician for this mix, with deep Somerville roots and a penchant for innovation and reform.

He had a solid base of support to run for the 8th District seat when Joe Kennedy declined to seek reelection. In a 10-candidate field, Capuano led with 23%, with former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn (1983-93) the runner-up at 17%.

In the House, Capuano is among the most liberal Democrats. He harshly criticized the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq and also questioned President Barack Obama’s decision in 2011 to order air strikes against Libya without congressional approval. On the Financial Services Committee, he worked closely with Massachusetts neighbor Barney Frank, proposing in 2012 to merge the Securities and Exchange Commission with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission to try to prevent financial disasters like the $1.2 billion loss at derivatives broker MF Global. Capuano unsuccessfully sought in February 2011 to amend a Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill to require greater disclosure of a passenger’s baggage fees when a fare is quoted.

Capuano is close to Pelosi, who grew up in Baltimore as the daughter of a congressman and shares with Capuano an urban, ethnic political background. After Democrats won the majority in 2006, Pelosi put Capuano in charge of the transition. Tasked with helping to revise party caucus rules and ethics guidelines, Capuano emphasized inclusion and reform. In March 2008, the House passed his chief proposal,creating an Office of Congressional Ethics, an independent board that for the first time allowed non-lawmakers to review possible ethics violations by House members. He chaired an internal task force that studied the office in 2012. Capuano also chaired the House Administration Committee’s Capitol Security Subcommittee, in charge of the Capitol Police force and other internal operations of Congress, and the Commission on Mailing Standards, which supervises franked mail, another sensitive insider task that requires the trust of House leaders. Republicans groused about possible free speech violations in a Capuano proposal to require House approval of members’ postings on outside websites, but he responded that the criticism was “laughably inaccurate.”

Despite his close proximity to the Democratic leadership, Capuano has a penchant for pugnacious commentary. The Boston Herald observed in an August 2012 editorial that Capuano “has this unorthodox (for a politician) habit of telling the unvarnished truth.” His tongue got him into trouble in February 2011, when he addressed a Boston group protesting Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-union policies. “Every once in a while, you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary,” Capuano said. He later said his choice of words was inappropriate. Two years earlier, he told the corporate titans of eight banks that took a government bailout, “All or most of you engaged in all or some of the activities that created this crisis. You come here today on your bicycles after buying Girl Scout cookies and helping out Mother Teresa. You’re saying, ‘We’re sorry. We didn’t mean it. We won’t do it again. Trust us.’ America doesn’t trust you anymore.”

In September 2010, before his party was swamped in the election that year, Capuano complained openly about President Barack Obama and his top advisers to The Daily Beast website: “They’re too disconnected from the grass roots and members of the House close to the grass roots,” he said. After Democrats lost their House majority in the election, despite his alliance with Pelosi, he said that the entire leadership team should step down, and told Politico, “If the Red Sox came in and lost every game of the year and they kept the manager at the end of the year, that’s a problem. That’s what we seem to be on the verge of doing.” But he nonetheless supported Pelosi for minority leader when she announced she would seek the post.

After the 2009 death of Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy, Capuano entered the special election race to fill the remainder of his term. Pelosi endorsed him and came to his defense when Democratic candidate Martha Coakley, the state attorney general, criticized his vote in 2009 for the health care overhaul that included an amendment banning coverage for abortions in insurance plans receiving federal funds. He emphasized his vote against the USA PATRIOT Act and its provision authorizing roving wiretaps. But Coakley had superior name recognition and won the December 8 primary 47%-28%. Coakley went on to lose the general election to Republican Scott Brown.

Capuano considered running against Brown in 2012, but deferred to national progressive folk hero Elizabeth Warren and even became an enthusiastic surrogate for Warren in her successful race against Brown. After the election, when Obama named Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry as his secretary of State, Capuano considered running for Kerry’s seat but again deferred, this time to fellow Democratic Reps. Stephen Lynch and Ed Markey.

Michael Capuano Votes and Bills

National Journal’s rating system is an objective method of analyzing voting.
The liberal score means that the lawmaker’s votes were more liberal than that percentage of his colleagues’ votes.
The conservative score means his votes were more conservative than that percentage of his colleagues’ votes.
The composite score is an average of a lawmaker’s six issue-based scores.
See all NJ Voting

More Liberal

More Conservative

2013

2012

2011

Economic

83
(L) :
16 (C)

89
(L) :
- (C)

92
(L) :
- (C)

Social

73
(L) :
24 (C)

81
(L) :
15 (C)

80
(L) :
- (C)

Foreign

90
(L) :
6 (C)

93
(L) :
- (C)

88
(L) :
- (C)

Composite

83.3
(L) : 16.7 (C)

91.3
(L) : 8.7 (C)

93.3
(L) : 6.7 (C)

Interest Group Ratings

The vote ratings by 10 special interest groups provide insight into a lawmaker’s general ideology and the degree to which he or she agrees with the group’s point of view.
Two organizations provide just one combined rating for 2011 and 2012, the two sessions of the 112th Congress. They are the ACLU and the ITIC.
About the interest groups.

The key votes show how a member of Congress voted on the major bills of the year.
N indicates a "no" vote; Y a "yes" vote. If a member voted "present" or was absent, the bill caption is not shown.
For a complete description of the bills included in key votes, see the Almanac's Guide to Usage.

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